Book Launch: Giovanni Bellini e la pittura veneta a Berlino. Le collezioni di James Simon e Edward Solly alla Gemäldegalerie

Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
plus OCT, 05 2016

Giovanni Bellini e la pittura veneta a Berlino

Le collezioni di James Simon e Edward Solly alla Gemäldegalerie

Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli

Scripta edizioni, Verona, 2015

Quattrocento and early Cinquecento paintings are an important part of the considerable heritage of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. The first comprehensive study of the gallery’s Venetian collection, this book mainly focuses on works by Giovanni Bellini, some of the most influential, key painters in his generation, and his students and followers. The first part of the book is devoted to the history of the Gemäldegalerie. Seen through the biographies of the collectors and patrons, this section highlights the great importance of the group of Venetian paintings in the Berlin gallery. The presence of such a large number of Venetian paintings in the Gemäldegalerie is mostly due to two people: the English collector and dealer Edward Solly, who sold his rich collection of paintings to King Frederick Wilhelm III in 1821, and the Berlin manufacturer and collector James Simon, who bequeathed an important series of paintings by Venetian artists to the gallery in 1904. The second part of the book illustrates the two principal collections of Venetian paintings by means of a “tour” with a concise “biography” of each painting.

Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli is an art historian and associate researcher at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Max-Planck-Institut, Florence. She has published numerous texts on Venetian painting, collecting and the relationship between Venice and Islamic art. She contributed to the book Tarsie lignee della Basilica di San Marco (Milan, 1998) and has been involved in several exhibitions such as Venice and the Islamic World. 828- 1797 (Paris, Institut du Monde Arabe-New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), Crivelli a Brera and Crivelli e l’arte del tessile (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, 2009-2010), and Giovanni Bellini. La nascita della pittura devozionale umanistica (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, 2014). Together with Gerhard Wolf she gave a paper at the conference Gift, Good, Theft. Circulation and Reception of Islamic Objects in Italy and the Mediterranean World, 1250-1500 at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Max-Planck-Institut, and she co-edited the book Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World (Venice 2010).


The book will be presented by Wolfgang Wolters, a former professor of art history at the Technische Universität, Berlin, Matteo Ceriana, Director of the Palatine Gallery in Florence and Daniele Ferrara, Director of the “Polo Museale del Veneto”..

5 October 2016, 5 PM, Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Sala del Soffitto